The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4)

by Michael Hjorth

  Four dead.

  Two children.

  A family.

  They had yet to be formally identified, but Karin and Emil Carlsten owned and lived in the house with their two sons Georg and Fred, so Erik would be very surprised if this wasn’t Karin Carlsten. Sometimes, when he spoke to colleagues from Stockholm and Gothenburg, or even from Karlstad, they were surprised that he didn’t know everyone in Torsby. That was where he came from, wasn’t it? Surely it was just some little dump in the middle of the forest? Erik would simply sigh wearily. There were almost twelve thousand people living in the community as a whole, with just over four thousand in the town centre. Did anyone in Stockholm know four thousand people? No.

  He had never met the Carlstens, but he thought he had heard the name … in connection with police business quite recently?

  ‘Do you know the Carlstens?’ he asked Fredrika, who was still on the veranda, putting on her shoe protectors with some difficulty.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I seem to remember we came across them last winter.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Would you check it out, please?’

  Fredrika nodded, removed the one blue plastic protector she had managed to put on, and headed for the car. Erik turned his attention back to the brown-haired, thirty-five-year-old woman on the floor.

  There was a hole in her chest, almost ten centimetres across. Too big for a pistol or a rifle – more like a double-barrelled shotgun. The amount of blood on the floor suggested a substantial exit wound. Erik guessed that the perpetrator had fired at point-blank range, with the barrel of the gun pressed up against the woman’s body. The cordite residue had collected between the skin and the sternum, and the intense pressure had flayed the skin, causing charring to the woman’s white woollen sweater around the entry hole. Death must have been instantaneous.

  He glanced back at the door; she was less than a metre away from it, as if she had opened the door and someone had put a gun to her chest and fired before she had time to react. The impact had hurled her backwards.

  Whoever shot her must have stepped over her and continued into the house.

  Erik got to his feet and did the same.

  The first room off the hallway was a large kitchen; no doubt an estate agent would have described it as a ‘rustic farmhouse kitchen’ if the house had been up for sale. An open brick fireplace in one corner. High-quality pine flooring, with a matching ceiling. A bread peel and some kind of kitchen tool he didn’t recognise hanging on the wall above a traditional wooden sofa. An old black wood-burning stove among the array of modern white goods.

  The remains of breakfast were still on the big pine table. A bowl of what looked like yogurt with Oat Krispies. An overturned chair. A boy, eight or nine years old, lying on the floor. Still in his pyjamas.

  It was the Easter holiday. No school. Unfortunately, Erik thought.

  A closer look at the boy seemed to confirm his theory about the shotgun. One arm had more or less been ripped off at the shoulder. Minor perforations on the throat and one cheek. What was the distance if the killer had fired from the doorway? Two metres? Three? Enough for the deadly projectiles to spray outwards. The boy might not have died instantly, but it couldn’t have taken more than a minute for him to bleed to death.

  What next?

  Someone had run through the room after the boy had been shot. A child. Small footprints in the blood around the chair. Erik looked towards the room beyond the kitchen: a small living room, with a television and a DVD player. Was the other boy watching TV when he heard the shots? Perhaps he got up when he heard the first bang. Stood in the doorway and saw his brother go down. Then he ran. Where? The trail led to the stairs.

  Why wasn’t he killed in the kitchen too? Was the gunman reloading? Erik checked the floor; no cartridges, as far as he could see. He must remember to ask Fabian if he had picked them up.

  ‘Jan Ceder.’

  Erik just managed to stop himself from jumping as Fredrika materialised behind him.

  ‘The Carlstens reported him to the police in November,’ she went on, her gaze fixed on the dead child on the floor.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A breach of hunting regulations.’

  ‘What kind of breach?’ Erik persisted patiently.

  ‘They handed in video footage of Ceder with a dead wolf on his property.’

  ‘So he was convicted.’

  A statement rather than a question.

  ‘He was fined,’ Fredrika confirmed.

  Erik nodded to himself. A huntsman. A shotgun. It didn’t prove anything, of course, there were plenty of people around here with guns and hunting permits, but it was a start.

  ‘He threatened them last Tuesday.’

  Erik’s train of thought was broken. Had he understood Fredrika correctly? Sometimes it was difficult because she didn’t give any more information than was absolutely necessary – often not even that.

  ‘Ceder?’ he asked, just to be on the safe side. ‘Jan Ceder threatened the Carlstens last Tuesday?’

  Fredrika nodded, looking directly at Erik for the first time since she had entered the kitchen.

  ‘Outside the swimming baths. Several witnesses.’

  Erik rapidly processed the information. Could it be that simple? Could someone be that stupid? The answer to both questions was yes. Just because this was a brutal, violent crime, it didn’t necessarily have to be complex and carefully planned. Quite the reverse, in fact.

  ‘I want to speak to him,’ he said to Fredrika. ‘Send someone to bring him in.’

  Fredrika left the room, and Erik reviewed his decision as he followed the small bloody footprints to the staircase.

  A threat.

  A huntsman.

  A shotgun.

  He really hoped this was the answer. He had been in charge of the Violent Crimes Unit with the Värmland police for just over two months, and he had no desire to be landed with a long-running investigation. Pia would feel the same. She would demand a quick resolution, so that everyone in the community could put the whole thing behind them. Move on.

  The footprints became fainter and fainter, and disappeared completely a few metres from the foot of the stairs. Erik began to climb. At the top he found a long, narrow landing with three doors, two of which were standing open. He glanced in the room on the left: bunk beds and toys strewn across the floor revealed that this was the boys’ room. He walked to the end of the landing and stopped. Slumped against what Erik assumed was the bathroom door was Emil. He looked a few years older than Karin, or maybe it was just the sprinkling of grey in his hair. Dead, of course. Definitely a shotgun this time. Right in the middle of his chest. Erik pictured the man rushing out of the bedroom to find the gunman standing at the top of the stairs.

  He looked around; it didn’t seem as though Emil Carlsten had brought any kind of weapon with him. He must have heard what was going on downstairs, yet he had come out unarmed. He probably hadn’t been thinking clearly. Erik couldn’t even imagine how he would react if this happened at home. If it had been Pia and their daughter downstairs.

  He stepped over the man’s legs into the bedroom. A double bed dominated the space, at least two metres by two metres. Plenty of room for children having nightmares. The quilt and decorative pillows were neatly in place. Two bedside tables, a dressing table with a mirror. One wall was completely taken up by wardrobes; the doors of the middle closet were wide open.

  Karin’s.

  Dresses, blouses and skirts on hangers.

  Two thin bare legs protruded among the shoes on the floor. Erik moved closer.

  The second son was sitting right at the back. He had crawled in as far as he could go, with a blanket on his knee. As if he were trying to hide. Was that why Emil didn’t get any further? Had his son come running up the stairs, and Emil had tried to hide him? To save him?

  If so, he had failed.

  The gunman had found him. He must have stood exactly where Erik was standing now
, just over a metre from the child. The barrel of the gun even closer. The blast had practically torn off the boy’s head.

  Erik had to turn away. He had seen many things that human beings were capable of doing to one another, but this …

  The children. The pyjamas. Those thin, bare legs …

  He sat down on the bed and took several deep breaths, forcing back the tears. Perched on that big double bed, the tears scalding his eyes, he swore that he would catch whoever had done this. He couldn’t remember ever articulating his goal so clearly before, but this was different. He was going to catch whoever had done this.

  Whatever it took.

  Sebastian had walked to work in Kungsholmen as usual.

  It was his new routine. It took longer, and the more he was away from his apartment, the better. He was seriously considering finding a new place to live, but then again he spent very little time there. When he was at home he paced the floor until he got tired, then he tried to read the books he claimed he had already read. However, he was so restless that he started a new book before he’d finished the first one. A chapter here, another there, but still his thoughts floated around like driftwood.

  Even women bored him. He still flirted, finding a certain relaxation in the process, but he was amazed at how rarely he had taken it all the way recently. That was very unusual for him.

  But the image of Ursula on the floor …

  He couldn’t get it out of his head.

  The pool of blood spreading, leaking from her right eye like a bag that had burst, her hair sticky and red. He still thought the sweet smell of blood lingered in the hallway, in spite of the amount of bleach he had used to scrub it down.

  So he went to the office every day. He needed to work. An investigation, preferably complex and challenging, something that would demand every scrap of concentration.

  But such a case was notable by its absence. None of the district police forces had asked for help from the National CID Murder Squad, known as Riksmord, so as usual the team were taking some leave in lieu of the overtime they had accrued. Billy, who was normally there whether they had a case or not, dropped in now and again to check his emails, but that was all.

  Sebastian saw Torkel even less often, which was perhaps just as well. Torkel loved Ursula, and Ursula had been in Sebastian’s apartment when the bullet penetrated her eye. Her lifeless body had been lying in Sebastian’s hallway. He had a feeling that Torkel would always blame him for what had happened, even though they had made a point of avoiding the topic on the few occasions when they had met.

  Did Sebastian love Ursula? Once upon a time, probably. But his first thought when he heard the shot and saw her lying there was terrible. It wasn’t muddied by panic. It was crystal clear, and it was anything but loving.

  What a fucking nuisance.

  A woman he had known for many years. A woman to whom he had grown closer, with whom he had been more honest than anyone else, lay dying on his floor, and his first reaction was ‘what a fucking nuisance’.

  He recognised the thought very well.

  It came into his head in connection with most things: conflict, importunate women, boring tasks at work, social events. In those contexts it was perfectly natural, possibly even a good thing.

  But in this context …

  In his hallway, after the shooting.

  Even he found it frightening.

  The only bright spot was that Vanja was around from time to time. She was the real reason why he still went into work. Their relationship had improved recently; the shock of discovering that Valdemar was not her biological father had turned her life upside down. It weakened her suspicion that Sebastian had somehow been involved when she lost her place on the FBI training course; it was as if she no longer had the energy to follow that particular fear to its conclusion.

  It was understandable; few individuals would be able to cope with what she was dealing with at the moment. A war on several fronts. It was better to seal a fragile peace treaty with one person at least.

  Besides which, Sebastian had persistently denied any involvement whatsoever. He had appealed to the selection committee twice, explaining how wrong their decision had been. Needless to say he had made sure by devious means that Vanja found out about his sterling efforts on both occasions. The committee had stood firm: Vanja Lithner was welcome to submit an application the next time a place at Quantico became available. However, Sebastian’s intervention paid dividends in another way.

  A few days after his final attempt, he had bumped into Vanja in the corridor. She was softer than she used to be. She seemed tired, not so keen to start a fight, not quite so ready to attack at the first opportunity. She even said hello. She told him she had heard about his efforts on her behalf, and then she went on to tell him about her father, who was no longer her father.

  They had grown closer. Not as close as before, but it was a start, and from then on his thoughts of Ursula had begun to fade.

  He had rediscovered his focus.

  Vanja hadn’t even considered getting back in the car with Anna. She had to keep her distance from the woman who was her mother, but who certainly hadn’t behaved like a mother. No way.

  Outside the taxi the spring was well advanced, even though it was only April. The days had been warm for over a week now, giving a taste of early summer. But Vanja felt frozen inside. Abandoned. Her father was no longer her father. As for her mother, she had no idea where they stood.

  Who did she have left?

  Not Billy. Not any more. They had been like brother and sister, but they had drifted apart. He was completely absorbed in his relationship with Maya, his fiancée; they had been together for a year, but Vanja had met her only in passing. And now they were getting married, apparently; Vanja didn’t even know if she would be invited.

  She didn’t see much of Torkel, her boss and mentor, these days either. He wasn’t in the office very often after what had happened to Ursula. She wondered if he was thinking of packing it in; sometimes it felt that way when she did see him.

  Who else was close to her?

  It was a short list.

  Ridiculously short.

  Jonathan, her ex-boyfriend, who called occasionally, hoping they might get back together, or at least that they might fall into bed.

  Perhaps the odd colleague from her time at the academy; she saw them now and again, but they were all in the middle of building their families.

  And then there was Sebastian Bergman.

  If anyone had told her when they first met on a case in Västerås how much time they would spend together in the future, she would have laughed out loud. The idea would have been too absurd to contemplate. He drove her crazy, he wore her out. But these days she actually found herself missing him. How did that happen? How had a promiscuous, narcissistic criminal psychologist ended up on her ridiculously short list?

  It wasn’t just the lack of others that put him there, although it would presumably have been easier to shut him out if she’d been really close to someone else in her life.

  There was another reason.

  She enjoyed talking to him. He was impossible, rude and patronising with other people, but with her he was warm and gentle and perceptive. He chased women like trophies without any consideration for their feelings, but he cared about hers. She didn’t understand why, but it was true. He couldn’t hide it.

  But could she trust him? He was often way too close when bad stuff happened.

  Too close to the evidence that had brought Valdemar down.

  Too close to Håkan Persson Riddarstolpe and the report that put an end to her hopes of training with the FBI.

  But whichever way she looked at it, she couldn’t find a single rational explanation as to why Sebastian would want to destroy her life. He insisted it was all a coincidence, and perhaps he was right. The problem was that if Vanja had learned anything from her job, it was that coincidences were extremely rare. Too many coincidences became circumstantial evidence. Possible be
came probable.

  The coincidences around Sebastian were almost there. They were on the borderline, but maybe they hadn’t crossed it yet.

  She needed him. She was so lonely right now.

  Erik Flodin parked outside the low, flat, and if truth were told, extremely ugly and boring building at Bergebyvägen 22, which had been his workplace until February. He got out of the car and headed for the main entrance. The three journalists who had been waiting on the wooden benches outside the police station got to their feet as soon as they saw him approaching. He recognised them all: two from Värmlands Folkblad and one from the local desk of Nya Wermlands-Tidningen.

  They wanted to know what he could tell them about the murders. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said as he pushed open the door. He nodded to Kristina and Dennis on reception; he was taking out his pass card as his phone rang. He swiped the card and keyed in the four-digit code; once he was through the inner door he took the call from Pia.

  No greeting, just: ‘Is it true?’ Erik thought he could hear a hint of reproach; why had she had to hear it from someone else and not from him? ‘A family? An entire family has been shot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where? Who are they?’

  ‘Just outside Storbråten. Their name is Carlsten.’

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘We’ve got one … I wouldn’t say suspect, but we have the name of someone who’d threatened the family.’

  ‘Who?’

  Erik didn’t even hesitate. He usually shared most details of ongoing investigations with his wife, and so far nothing had ever leaked.

  ‘Jan Ceder.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘We’ve had dealings with him before – I’m just going to talk to him now.’

  Pia sighed deeply, and Erik could picture her standing at the window of her office in the council building, gazing out at the rowan trees in front of the Co-op on Tingshusgatan.

  ‘It’ll be all over the papers,’ she said with another troubled sigh.